Works of Sax Rohmer Page 6

  I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the malignant force of the man was something surpassing my experience. He was surprised by this sudden intrusion — yes, but no trace of fear showed upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt. And, as I paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his gaze from mine.

  “IT’S FU-MANCHU!” cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice that was almost a scream. “IT’S FU-MANCHU! Cover him! Shoot him dead if—”

  The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.

  Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped from under me.

  One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and plunged into icy water, which closed over my head.

  Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following my own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle. But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me; I was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down the black terror that had me by the throat — terror of the darkness about me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I was cast amid stifling stenches and the lapping of tidal water.

  “Smith!” I cried.… “Help! Help!”

  My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about to cry out again, when, mustering all my presence of mind and all my failing courage, I recognized that I had better employment of my energies, and began to swim straight ahead, desperately determined to face all the horrors of this place — to die hard if die I must.

  A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed into the water beside me!

  I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.

  Another fiery drop — and another!

  I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers. I had reached one bound of my watery prison. More fire fell from above, and the scream of hysteria quivered, unuttered, in my throat.

  Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments, I threw my head back and raised my eyes.

  No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it was merely a question of time for the floor to collapse. For it was beginning to emit a dull, red glow.

  The room above me was in flames!

  It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through the cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me — for the death trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.

  My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear the flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead. Shortly that cauldron would be loosed upon my head. The glow of the flames grew brighter … and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding the building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls — showed me that there was no escape!

  By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames. By that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!

  Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a trap — but the bottom three were missing!

  Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what should be my funeral pyre — reddening the oily water and adding a new dread to the whispering, clammy horror of the pit. But something it showed me … a projecting beam a few feet above the water … and directly below the iron ladder!

  “Merciful Heaven!” I breathed. “Have I the strength?”

  A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible force. I knew what it portended and fought it down — grimly, sternly.

  My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest aching dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired muscles to work, and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam. Nearer I swam … nearer. Its shadow fell black upon the water, which now had all the seeming of a pool of blood. Confused sounds — a remote uproar — came to my ears. I was nearly spent … I was in the shadow of the beam! If I could throw up one arm…

  A shrill scream sounded far above me!

  “Petrie! Petrie!” (That voice must be Smith’s!) “Don’t touch the beam! For God’s sake DON’T TOUCH THE BEAM! Keep afloat another few seconds and I can get to you!”

  Another few seconds! Was that possible?

  I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest sight which that night yet had offered.

  Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung … supported by the hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!

  “I can’t reach him!”

  It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up — and saw the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off! With it came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask, deprived of its fastenings, fell from position! “Here! Here! Be quick! Oh! be quick! You can lower this to him! Be quick! Be quick!”

  A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders as the speaker bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith; and I think it was my wonder at knowing her for the girl whom that day I had surprised in Cadby’s rooms which saved my life.

  For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that beautiful, flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers — which were wild with fear … for me!

  Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp, and I, with the strength of desperation, by that means seized hold upon the lowest rung. With my friend’s arm round me I realized that exhaustion was even nearer than I had supposed. My last distinct memory is of the bursting of the floor above and the big burning joist hissing into the pool beneath us. Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam which I had striven to reach.

  “The severed fingers—” I said; and swooned.

  How Smith got me through the trap I do not know — nor how we made our way through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon. My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend’s arm supporting me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.

  A bright glare dazzled my eyes. A crowd surged about us, and a clangor and shouting drew momentarily nearer.

  “It’s the engines coming,” explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment. “Shen-Yan’s is in flames. It was your shot, as you fell through the trap, broke the oil-lamp.”

  “Is everybody out?”

  “So far as we know.”

  “Fu-Manchu?”

  Smith shrugged his shoulders.

  “No one has seen him. There was some door at the back—”

  “Do you think he may—”

  “No,” he said tensely. “Not until I see him lying dead before me shall I believe it.”

  Then memory resumed its sway. I struggled to my feet.

  “Smith, where is she?” I cried. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “She’s given us the slip, Doctor,” said Inspector Weymouth, as a fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane. “So has Mr. Singapore Charlie — and, I’m afraid, somebody else. We’ve got six or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep, but I suppose we shall have to let ’em go again. Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was disguised as a Chinaman. I expect that’s why she managed to slip away.”

  I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue, how the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith had dropped it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder. Her mask the girl might have retained, but her wig, I felt certain, had been dropped into the water.

  It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing upon the blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan’s opium-shop, and Smith and I were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God knows how many crimes, that I had an idea.

  “Smith,” I said, “did you bring the pigtail with you that was found on Ca
dby?”

  “Yes. I had hoped to meet the owner.”

  “Have you got it now?”

  “No. I met the owner.”

  I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.

  “We shall never really excel at this business,” continued Nayland Smith. “We are far too sentimental. I knew what it meant to us, Petrie, what it meant to the world, but I hadn’t the heart. I owed her your life — I had to square the account.”

  CHAPTER VII

  NIGHT fell on Redmoat. I glanced from the window at the nocturne in silver and green which lay beneath me. To the west of the shrubbery, with its broken canopy of elms and beyond the copper beech which marked the center of its mazes, a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where it swept into a broad. Faint bird-calls floated over the water. These, with the whisper of leaves, alone claimed the ear.

  Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening; but to my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors; to my ears, every sound a signal of dread. For the deathful hand of Fu-Manchu was stretched over Redmoat, at any hour to loose strange, Oriental horrors upon its inmates.

  “Well,” said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, “we had dared to hope him dead, but we know now that he lives!”

  The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow upon the table, and studied the play of expression upon the refined, sensitive face of the clergyman.

  “You think I acted rightly in sending for you, Mr. Smith?”

  Nayland Smith smoked furiously.

  “Mr. Eltham,” he replied, “you see in me a man groping in the dark. I am to-day no nearer to the conclusion of my mission than upon the day when I left Mandalay. You offer me a clew; I am here. Your affair, I believe, stands thus: A series of attempted burglaries, or something of the kind, has alarmed your household. Yesterday, returning from London with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and, occupying a compartment to yourselves, you both slept. Your daughter awoke, and saw someone else in the carriage — a yellow-faced man who held a case of instruments in his hands.”

  “Yes; I was, of course, unable to enter into particulars over the telephone. The man was standing by one of the windows. Directly he observed that my daughter was awake, he stepped towards her.”

  “What did he do with the case in his hands?”

  “She did not notice — or did not mention having noticed. In fact, as was natural, she was so frightened that she recalls nothing more, beyond the fact that she strove to arouse me, without succeeding, felt hands grasp her shoulders — and swooned.”

  “But someone used the emergency cord, and stopped the train.”

  “Greba has no recollection of having done so.”

  “Hm! Of course, no yellow-faced man was on the train. When did you awake?”

  “I was aroused by the guard, but only when he had repeatedly shaken me.”

  “Upon reaching Great Yarmouth you immediately called up Scotland Yard? You acted very wisely, sir. How long were you in China?”

  Mr. Eltham’s start of surprise was almost comical.

  “It is perhaps not strange that you should be aware of my residence in China, Mr. Smith,” he said; “but my not having mentioned it may seem so. The fact is” — his sensitive face flushed in palpable embarrassment— “I left China under what I may term an episcopal cloud. I have lived in retirement ever since. Unwittingly — I solemnly declare to you, Mr. Smith, unwittingly — I stirred up certain deep-seated prejudices in my endeavors to do my duty — my duty. I think you asked me how long I was in China? I was there from 1896 until 1900 — four years.”

  “I recall the circumstances, Mr. Eltham,” said Smith, with an odd note in his voice. “I have been endeavoring to think where I had come across the name, and a moment ago I remembered. I am happy to have met you, sir.”

  The clergyman blushed again like a girl, and slightly inclined his head, with its scanty fair hair.

  “Has Redmoat, as its name implies, a moat round it? I was unable to see in the dusk.”

  “It remains. Redmoat — a corruption of Round Moat — was formerly a priory, disestablished by the eighth Henry in 1536.” His pedantic manner was quaint at times. “But the moat is no longer flooded. In fact, we grow cabbages in part of it. If you refer to the strategic strength of the place” — he smiled, but his manner was embarrassed again— “it is considerable. I have barbed wire fencing, and — other arrangements. You see, it is a lonely spot,” he added apologetically. “And now, if you will excuse me, we will resume these gruesome inquiries after the more pleasant affairs of dinner.”

  He left us.

  “Who is our host?” I asked, as the door closed.

  Smith smiled.

  “You are wondering what caused the ‘episcopal cloud?’” he suggested. “Well, the deep-seated prejudices which our reverend friend stirred up culminated in the Boxer Risings.”

  “Good heavens, Smith!” I said; for I could not reconcile the diffident personality of the clergyman with the memories which those words awakened.

  “He evidently should be on our danger list,” my friend continued quickly; “but he has so completely effaced himself of recent years that I think it probable that someone else has only just recalled his existence to mind. The Rev. J. D. Eltham, my dear Petrie, though he may be a poor hand at saving souls, at any rate, has saved a score of Christian women from death — and worse.”

  “J. D. Eltham—” I began.

  “Is ‘Parson Dan’!” rapped Smith, “the ‘Fighting Missionary,’ the man who with a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German doctor held the hospital at Nan-Yang against two hundred Boxers. That’s who the Rev. J. D. Eltham is! But what is he up to, now, I have yet to find out. He is keeping something back — something which has made him an object of interest to Young China!”

  During dinner the matters responsible for our presence there did not hold priority in the conversation. In fact, this, for the most part, consisted in light talk of books and theaters.

  Greba Eltham, the clergyman’s daughter, was a charming young hostess, and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr. Eltham’s nephew, completed the party. No doubt the girl’s presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain from the subject uppermost in our minds.

  These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of the circumstances which were bearing my friend and me onward to unknown issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.

  So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinner-party at Redmoat, in the old-world dining-room; it was so very peaceful, so almost grotesquely calm. For I, within my very bones, felt it to be the calm before the storm. When, later, we men passed to the library, we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us.

  “Redmoat,” said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, “has latterly become the theater of strange doings.”

  He stood on the hearth-rug. A shaded lamp upon the big table and candles in ancient sconces upon the mantelpiece afforded dim illumination. Mr. Eltham’s nephew, Vernon Denby, lolled smoking on the window-seat, and I sat near to him. Nayland Smith paced restlessly up and down the room.

  “Some months ago, almost a year,” continued the clergyman, “a burglarious attempt was made upon the house. There was an arrest, and the man confessed that he had been tempted by my collection.” He waved his hand vaguely towards the several cabinets about the shadowed room.

  “It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for — playing at forts to run away with me.” He smiled an apology. “I virtually fortified Redmoat — against trespassers of any kind, I mean. You have seen that the house stands upon a kind of large mound. This is artificial, being the buried ruins of a Roman outwork; a portion of the ancient castrum.” Again he waved indicatively, this time toward the window.

  “When it was a priory it was completely isolated and defended by its environing moat. Today it is completely surrounded by barbed-wire
fencing. Below this fence, on the east, is a narrow stream, a tributary of the Waverney; on the north and west, the high road, but nearly twenty feet below, the banks being perpendicular. On the south is the remaining part of the moat — now my kitchen garden; but from there up to the level of the house is nearly twenty feet again, and the barbed wire must also be counted with.

  “The entrance, as you know, is by the way of a kind of cutting. There is a gate at the foot of the steps (they are some of the original steps of the priory, Dr. Petrie), and another gate at the head.”

  He paused, and smiled around upon us boyishly.

  “My secret defenses remain to be mentioned,” he resumed; and, opening a cupboard, he pointed to a row of batteries, with a number of electric bells upon the wall behind. “The more vulnerable spots are connected at night with these bells,” he said triumphantly. “Any attempt to scale the barbed wire or to force either gate would set two or more of these ringing. A stray cow raised one false alarm,” he added, “and a careless rook threw us into a perfect panic on another occasion.”

  He was so boyish — so nervously brisk and acutely sensitive — that it was difficult to see in him the hero of the Nan-Yang hospital. I could only suppose that he had treated the Boxers’ raid in the same spirit wherein he met would-be trespassers within the precincts of Redmoat. It had been an escapade, of which he was afterwards ashamed, as, faintly, he was ashamed of his “fortifications.” “But,” rapped Smith, “it was not the visit of the burglar which prompted these elaborate precautions.”

  Mr. Eltham coughed nervously.

  “I am aware,” he said, “that having invoked official aid, I must be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Smith. It was the burglar who was responsible for my continuing the wire fence all round the grounds, but the electrical contrivance followed, later, as a result of several disturbed nights. My servants grew uneasy about someone who came, they said, after dusk. No one could describe this nocturnal visitor, but certainly we found traces. I must admit that.